


God save the prom queen, only eighteen (turned her tears to diamonds in her crown)

by Buttercup_ghost



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa Zero, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: 78 class falls into despair, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Dangan Ronpa Zero Spoilers, F/F, F/M, Guilt, Homelessness, Hope!junko, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mastermind Naegi Makoto, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Past Child Abuse, Redemption, Role Reversal, Running Away, Timeline Alterations, despair makoto, shsl hope junko, ultimate hope junko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-11-30 23:39:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11474076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buttercup_ghost/pseuds/Buttercup_ghost
Summary: Just another dressed up heartbreakOr; junko, her past, and her future.





	God save the prom queen, only eighteen (turned her tears to diamonds in her crown)

It starts in house full of liquor and devoid of love, and it ends in a school with a little too much despair in its walls.

  
She loves despair, with its fangs biting into her, sucking out her blood. She loves the feeling of fire, loves when everything falls apart around her, when it crushes her, because what else was she supposed to do otherwise? How could she bare smiling for a camera, pretending that the other day she wasn't throwing up and washing filth off of her body, if she didnt love despair?

Sometimes she wonders if there was a time she didn't love it, of when she would cower behind her sister and ask if she really shouldn't have been born, when her sister would shake her head and hold her, telling her she wasn't a mistake. Sometimes she remembers a boy on the beach, and a crushed sand castle against her hands, flowing through her fingers no matter how hard she tries to hold it, just like him. Most of all, she remembers running, mukuros tears flowing down as she carried her, telling her to keep quiet, that they were leaving, that she would never be hit again by strong hands that were meant to protect, but could only destroy.

She sometimes remembers her sister standing over a corpse, a knife in her hand and her blouse unbuttoned.

She learns it's not just her family who has that ugly, dark, twisted thing that says to _hurt_ , that day.

She remembers digging through the trash for food, and huddling against mukuro with dirt in her hair.

She remembers the adults—she doesn't remember their names, or faces, she doesn't remember because it wasn't important—tearing them apart, how mukuro kicked and screamed, trying to break away.

  
She remembers the homes, each one different from the last. She remembers the one that keeps her, calling her beautiful, beautiful, and making her into a model. He strips away the red and pulls her hair in pigtails, strawberry blonde, artificial, like her.

She remembers the man's hands on her, hands that shouldn't be there, a wife unaware.

She doesn't tell, not a soul. She says she loves despair.

A letter arrives, eventually, scouting her out.

It's only a bit before hope's peak that she sees her sister again

Her sister, with her hair cut short and dyed black, red apparently to flashy in war, comes back to her and they can hardly recognize each other.

  
Mukuro feels guilty; feels as if it was her fault they were separated. Junko doesn't care—it's a formality, really, blame. But she can use that, use her sisters self hate and pity to her advantage.

The knife in her hand is cool, and she smiles. Mukuro quivers.

 

Her class greets her with a smile everyday, and it's bizarre. Even her sister doesn't smile, a blank look fixed permanently on her face until it crumbles like cement under her, a smile never gracing her face, not since they were little and alone together, a street becoming a playground. Junko always smiles, but not because she's happy.

She wants to break these looks on their faces, looks that show they don't know of despair, not like she does. They've always crawled out, nails digging into the ground and pulling up, escaping the bottomless pit, instead of sinking in it like her. She wants to share her hopelessness, her despair with them.

And so she does.

 

  
Makoto falls the hardest, as she picks at his insecurities. He preaches about hope, but he's still so unsure, and she smiles like a predictor going in for the kill. Mukuro cries over him, at night. The more they believe in hope, the harder they fall, she learns, for when they realize that hope won't save them after clinging to it for so long, there's nothing left for them to do except embrace the darkness.

It's almost too easy, she thinks, as they all fall to her feet.

 

She sees him, the sand that slipped through her fingers, and she thinks, _of_ _course_. He is a neurologist, just like she told him to be, and he is the ultimate one. She goes to him, keeping on a mask of a smile and planning. He is surprised, and she just smiles, and acts like she never left him, and he never left her.

When he kisses her, she almost feels like a girl instead of poison.

But then the moment ends, and she remembers the maddening feeling of despair and how it's pulled her under, how it's much more interesting than the predictable calming, _boring_ , waves of hope.

When she comes home and waves at mukuro, she flinches, as if she were to strike her. Junko looks down at her hands, smiles, and wonders how it's come to this, the ghost of his kiss still on her lips.

  
It was a part of a plan. She didn't calculate in the fact her sister might see her smile, see how happy she was, and stop playing her. She thought her fear of her was greater than her love of her. It's funny, really, that she accounted for everything except that. He makes her forget, and tries to reform her.

Her sister starts the plan, but she can't finish it.

  
And so ryouko stays.

 

Until she doesn't.

 

  
It was makoto who reminded her, face twisting into a sneer as he realized who she was, telling her to remember.

She does, but she wishes she doesn't.

  
Mukuro and mastuda find her in the bathroom, mirror shattered, hands in her hair, rocking back and forth as she laughs.

When they approach her, she grabs a piece of glass, hand gripping it tightly, blood flowing from it, and _lunges_.

Mukuro dodges.

Matsuda does not.

Their blood mixes together and she laughs and laughs and _laughs—_

She's crying.

 

  
The nurse has purple hair. It's a weird fact for her to focus on, but it's all she can think. Her hair is purple, unevenly cut, matching her eyes. The pink goes well with it, on her nurses uniform, different from the regular school ones the students were forced to wear. Her class had always refused to follow such mandatory, and the school had usually left them alone, as a pitiful attempt for the principle to make up with his ever cold daughter. Kyouko had purple hair, too, but it was different, a lighter shade, almost white, contrasting her dark eyes. The nurse stammers something, but she can hardly hear over her ringing ears, before she takes her injured hand in her bandaged one, and disinfects it, whispering encouraging words to her as she cleans it off, explaining about infections, or something. She doesn't pay attention, looking at this nurse's face, and thinking.

It's soft, and pale looking, and apologetic. She wonders when the last time she was apologetic was.

Why did she like despair, again?

 

The nurse with the purple hair and pink uniform— _mikan_ , as she learns—says mastuda will be fine. The stab wound in his shoulder barely missing any vitals. She doesn't know how she feels about it.

 

The only thing he asks is if she knows, once he's better. All she does is nod. They never speak of it again.

 

Somehow, mikan becomes apart of their group, showing up to see her with a smile on her lips and a blush on her cheeks. Soon, Junkos face turns scarlet as well. They kiss, the soft lips of a once cruel, now uncertain, model against the cracked and dry ones of a nurse who works to hard for others and not enough for herself.

Eventually, she starts to get the appeal of hope.

  
She tells them, one day, mukuro and mikan and mastuda, of a hand on her thigh and another pinning her down, of her descent into despair, of the corruption of her class. She half way expects them to push her away, but they don't.

 

Mikan, mastuda, and her make medicine for her class, refining the one they used on her, and mukuro frets, guarding them. The world has been pushed to its edge by the despair junko so carefully crafted, and was now trying to undue, makoto and some guy named izuru—she heard rumors about him, but she could never confirm his existence—at the forefront, trying to finish what she had started.

  
It works, at first, they've gathered the despairs, boarded up the school, and it seems to be going well.

Until a sickening familiar bear shows up.

 

  
It is the final trial, and people are dead. Izuru stands before them, looking devoid and blank, voice announcing that this is boring, and predictable. She might have been able to relate, before, but now it just kinda pisses her off. He talks to makoto, and he looks scared, surprised, at being addressed, and it almost hurts her how naive he is. There is a vial in his grasp, and izurus voice is drowning, _don't you want your memories back, Naegi?_ She tries to speak but all that comes out is a pitiful don't, don't, _please don't_.

_Don't you want to know what happened to your sister, Naegi?_

  
He injects the serum and laughs, laughs, _laughs_. Everyone is scared, but she is petrified.

_Say, junko, how come **you** get to be happy, after everything you've done, and I don't? You turned me into this, you know._

He wouldn't stop laughing.

Everyone looks at her like she's a monster, and she supposes she is.

 

 

 

 

 

Even after she escapes, even after they call her the ultimate hope, even after everything—

 

She can still hear his laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> https://youtu.be/OMbw-Dwq4bM


End file.
